


The last dance

by Naraht



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One morning Beverly realises that she has moved on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The last dance

She realises one morning that Jack has been dead for thirty years—dead for as long as he ever lived.

There is nothing particular about the morning that reminds her—nothing in the pale, clear dawn over the San Francisco skyline, or in the understated bedroom that she has just woken to. There is no anniversary that she should be commemorating, forced into remembrance by a simple conjunction of numbers. As she pulls the blankets more closely around her, she can see nothing around her that speaks of the past.

Even so, all of a sudden, she finds herself acutely aware of the thirty years that now separate her from Jack. Her memories of him are vivid and clear, but distant, as if she is seeing them through the wrong end of a telescope. It is like walking past an apartment in which she once lived. There is the life she once led, and here is she—in this bed, in this life—estranged from it forever. She used to long to feel Jack's touch, if only for one more time. Now she is deprived even of that ache that would make the feeling worthy of longing. And she wishes that she could remember exactly how it felt.

"Penny for your thoughts," says Jean-Luc gently, turning towards her in bed. After ten years—longer than she and Jack were married—he has finally learned how to ask. Yet she does not always remember how to answer.

"It's nothing, Jean-Luc," she says, her eyes still on the coming dawn. But the feeling of his hand clasping hers is shockingly vital, and its warmth pulls her even further from the memory of Jack.

She realises now that she has moved on. The past is now to her what it is to other people—another country, a place that she can visit but never inhabit. The thought should be comforting, but she is not wholly sure that she is glad.


End file.
